Lawrence advisory board adopts Vision 0 transportation safety plan; backs federal grant application for corridor studies and pedestrian pilots

The Connected City Advisory Board voted unanimously May 19 to approve the Vision 0 transportation safety action plan and to provide a letter of support for a federal Safe Streets and Roads for All (SS4A) grant application seeking funds for corridor studies and a pilot of leading pedestrian intervals.

The action plan lays out a “safe systems” approach that recognizes human error and seeks to design streets to reduce the severity of crashes, city staff said. The plan cites a 32-mile “high-injury network” that represents 6.5% of Lawrence’s roadway mileage but accounted for 64.8% of the city’s injury crashes and 66.2% of its fatal and disabling crashes in the 2018–2022 data window.

Jessica (staff member) presented the plan, saying the Vision 0 work is data driven and that the city intends to target resources at the high-injury network. “This approach, around Vision 0 and the safe systems approach acknowledges that there's human vulnerability and error,” Jessica said. She described the plan’s public engagement, a 211-response online survey and pop-up events that covered Lawrence, Eudora and Baldwin City, and a dashboard the city will publish with crash data supplied by KDOT.

Why this matters: The plan provides a policy and project framework that the city says will guide engineering, enforcement, education and emergency response work to reduce deaths and serious injuries on city streets.…